Recently the University Centre received fantastic news from NordForsk. UW and five project partners have been selected for funding. The research project is titled “Climate Change Resilience in Small Communities in the Nordic Countries” and will start in January 2021. The successful proposal was submitted to the NordForsk call “Nordic societal security in light of the emerging global and regional trends”.

UW will be involved with two researchers: CRD programme director Matthias Kokorsch and Uta Reichardt, currently post-doc at the Institute for Sustainability, University of Iceland. Matthias will contribute as specialist for social and community resilience and Uta as expert for natural hazards, risk management and infrastructure resilience. Uta and Matthias have also been responsible for setting up a new course called Coping with disasters, taught from 2021.

UW and organisations from Denmark, Norway and Sweden will conduct interdisciplinary research and examine how different hazards affect local communities across the Nordic countries. The hazards, which are regarded as a direct consequence of climate change, are coastal flooding due to storm surge, cloudbursts, wildfires, temperature extremes, landslides, slush avalanches (UW), flash floods, and storms. There are in total eight cases in five countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands). Research will deal with the questions how small rural communities in selected areas handle adverse events and build capacity, and under what circumstances they need help from the established system and civil society organisations. Against this background, a framework will be developed that can be disseminated to other vulnerable communities and authorities with responsibility for ensuring safety and adequate capacity for climate change resilience. The framework will enable both the small communities and the authorities to work together on tasks concerning prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery – all phases needed to secure communities against hazardous events.